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Coughlin Signs Deal to Coach for 4 Years

Tom Coughlin signed a four-year contract worth roughly $21 million to coach the Giants through 2011, completing a comeback on Friday just as surprising as the team’s recent championship run.

A little more than a year ago, Coughlin’s hold on his coaching career was tenuous. The Giants contemplated firing him after three seasons, following an 8-8 campaign and their second consecutive playoff exit in the first round.

It was enough to scare Coughlin into altering some of his long-held coaching conventions. Although he remained mostly true to his cranky, taskmaster reputation, a few well-placed tweaks — from the advent of a players council to a surprising summertime bowling party — allowed Coughlin’s players to view him in a much sunnier light.

Photo

Tom Coughlin nearly lost his job at the end of the 2006 season, when the Giants went 8-8.Credit
Barton Silverman/The New York Times

Coughlin steered the Giants through a season with no visible locker-room fractures and no public relations fires. With a subtle sense of camaraderie and an increasing comfort in the underdog role, the Giants followed a 10-6 season with three surprising road victories in the postseason. They then won Super Bowl XLII, 17-14, over the previously unbeaten New England Patriots.

At last month’s scouting combine in Indianapolis, with the terms of his new contract mostly in place, Coughlin continued to deflect questions about the difference that a year — and one more chance — could make.

“I see no reason to go back into that,” Coughlin said then. “Like I said, it’s about our team, our organization, the New York Giants, how we play, how we put it together. That’s where it should be and that’s where it will remain.”

Coughlin joined the Giants in 2004 with a four-year, $12 million contract. After the 2006 season, he was handed a short-term endorsement — a one-year extension, so he would not have to coach the final season of his contract with lame-duck status.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page D4 of the New York edition with the headline: Coughlin Signs Deal To Coach For 4 Years. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe